2013 Ford Fusion Energi — another plug-in hybrid joins the fray.

We don’t normally start with the car’s bonus features, but in the case of the 2013 Ford Fusion Energi, it’s such a delicious one that we couldn’t resist: when you buy this car, the bonus feature is that the front end looks kind of like an Aston Martin. Not many midsize sedans – I can’t think of any offhand, save an echt Aston Martin and it’s not quite in the midsize sedan niche – get to clone one of England’s fabled grand touring cars.

It’s the grille. With its five horizontal slats forming a shape that looks like an upside-down smile, it’s nearly identical to the one that personifies any number of Aston Martins over the years. Keep in mind that Ford owned Aston Martin for a dozen or so years – they grew fond of that Aston Martin look.

Once past the grille, what do we have? A four-door sedan that Ford apparently has designated as its style leader. Ford’s Fusion got a redesign for 2013 and it looks a lot more svelte than its predecessor Fusion. This field of the midsize sedan is perhaps the hardest-fought of any in the industry. The Fusion’s competitors are such best sellers as Honda’s Accord, Toyota’s Camry, and Nissan’s Altima. This is all-out war – each of these brands sells from about 24,000 to 35,000 units a month, making them the bread-and-butter cars for their respective manufacturers. So Ford is trying to make its own way to the top of this heap. (In the even nichier niche of plug-in hybrids, Ford competes with the new Accord plug-in and the Toyota Prius plug-in. Toyota has sold more than 2 million Priuses (Priusi?) worldwide and has a reputation as the ne plus ultra when it comes to hybids.)

Fusion has many different models

The Fusion is actually available in a wide range of power trains and comfort levels, from a $22,695 basic sedan with a 2.5-liter, 175-horsepower four-cylinder engine (22/34 mpg) up to the one we tested, at twice the price – a $44,975 Fusion Titanium Energi, which is fancy Ford language for plug-in hybrid (100 mpg equivalent, based on a complicated electric/gasoline formula; or 43 mpg on gasoline alone. The combined power is 188 horses.) The Fusion Energi qualifies for a $3,750 federal tax credit and, in California, a $1,500 tax rebate. Ford’s entry-level Fusion hybrid (not a plug-in) starts at nearly $28,000 and advertises that it gets 47 mpg across the board. But Consumer Reports ran tests showing that this Fusion hybrid gets nowhere near that kind of mileage and neither does Ford’s C-Max hybrid. The jury’s still out on the Fusion Energi, but suffice to say that a plug-in hybrid is a different breed of cat, largely because, as Ford claims, you can actually drive the thing about 20 miles purely on electric power.

On the road, the Fusion Energi has the typical ride of a modern car that is well modulated and does not want to offend you with any inordinate bumps and lurches. It’s relatively quiet (with one glaring exception we’ll get to later) and the interior is well thought-out as a place to put five passengers (just hope the three in the back seat are all good friends, or small children). The dash has all the requisite electronics that come with Ford’s complicated MyFord synchronous system and you either give up at the beginning or buckle down and read the manual to figure it out. Because this is a plug-in hybrid, the dash will give you a readout on the battery’s state of charge and on the regenerative braking process that helps recharge the batteries. (The Fusion Energi takes about two and a half hours to charge its battery on a 240-volt home-installed recharger, and about seven hours on a 120-volt system.) As you barrel down the interstate, a dashboard ideogram of fluttering green leaves will keep you apprised of how greenly you are driving. (At freeway speeds, all this hybrid technology matters little, given how much the headwinds pummeling the front of the car demand yet more fuel-consuming power to get this two-ton family sedan down the road.)

Nobody’s perfect

Now for some of the glitches. There seemed to be a combination of design flaws and, possibly, new car teething problems. It was good of Ford to put all-auto up-down window lifts in the car (this means one touch gets the window up or down and you don’t have to keep your finger on the switch.) But the right front door window lift would do auto-down, but not auto-up. (Ed. Note: are we a bit spoiled here, Mr. Topdown?) Out on the freeway, that four-cylinder engine gets pretty noisy when the gas/electric pedal goes to the floor. Sounds like a lawn mower at full tilt. The driver’s power seat has 10 different ways to get you comfortable; the front passenger seat has only two – backwards and forward. That means that small passengers ride lower than the driver. And in furtherance of downsizing, the Fusion trunk gets smaller and smaller as you go from model to model. The normal, entry-level Fusion has a trunk with nearly 16 cubic feet of trunk space, comparable to Accord/Camry/Altima. The hybrid Fusion’s trunk is about 12 cubic feet, and when you get to the plug-in hybrid it’s down to about 8 cubic feet. Further, the plug-in hybrid’s battery takes up so much space that the pass-through from trunk to passenger compartment (the car has fold-down rear seatbacks) has only a few inches of space – good for some short skis or long umbrellas. But that’s the price you pay for having high-tech cars lugging around large lithium-ion batteries.

What we have the U.S. car market these days is kind of a hybrid and plug-in hybrid war, with each manufacturer trying to out-EPA-mileage its competitors. It’s good for the environment and it’s good for energy conservation. How it plays out in the long run, however, is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, you could spend $44,975 for this Ford Fusion Energi Titanium Edition, or you could spend $27,995 for an entry-level Fusion hybrid and have $17,000 left over for a plush vacation in England, where Aston Martins are still made in the village of Gaydon (pop. 376), county of Warwickshire. If you speak nicely to the concierge at Aston Martin, maybe they’ll even give you a tour of the place. And you could ask the Aston folks why they copied the grille of a Ford Fusion.